The big American tech firms known as the “Silicon Six” have been accused of paying almost $278bn (£211bn) less corporate income tax in the past decade compared with the statutory rate for US companies making the same profits.
Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, Netflix, Apple and Microsoft generated $11tn of revenue and $2.5tn of profits over the past 10 years.
Yet they paid an average 18.8% in combined national and federal corporation taxes, compared with an average 29.7% in the US, according to the Fair Tax Foundation (FTF), which said the Silicon Six had “hardwired” tax avoidance into their business models.
Analysis by the not-for-profit organisation found that if one-off repatriation tax payments in the US connected to historical tax avoidance were excluded, the average corporate income tax contribution of the six firms fell to 16.1% over the past decade.
I’m not saying it’s okay, I’m saying we shouldn’t be expecting companies to act ethically. They will avoid as much tax as possible, so we should focus on lobbying governments to change the tax law to reduce avoidance and increase tax liability.
Well put.
We should be demanding they act ethically. The hell the rules should be different for them than for us.
We can demand anything we want. The reality is that’s never going to happen. Want a change? Change the laws. Make it so they can’t do it.
Good luck with that though. The government is screwed at this point.